Read the general investor planning overview
Hypothetical example: an investor plans to fund a U.S. E-2 enterprise with money currently sitting in their Canadian operating company's bank account, not in a personal account. E-2 status requires the investor's own investment, so the case needs to trace how ownership of that capital moves from the company to the investor personally, and then into the U.S. enterprise, rather than treating company funds and personal funds as interchangeable.
Why company funds are not automatically the investor's own investment
E-2 status requires that the invested capital belongs to the treaty investor, and funds sitting in a Canadian operating company's account are, as a matter of corporate law, the company's assets rather than the individual owner's personal assets, even where the owner holds all or most of the company's shares. Using those funds directly for a U.S. investment without addressing how ownership passes to the individual investor first can leave the case unable to show the investment is genuinely the investor's own, rather than the company's, which is a different structure with its own separate requirements.
Tracing ownership from the company to the investor
The clearer path is documenting how the funds moved from company ownership to personal ownership before being invested, for example through a dividend distribution, a shareholder loan repayment, or a salary or bonus payment, each properly recorded and, where relevant, reported for tax purposes, so there is a clean paper trail from company account to personal account to the U.S. enterprise. An investor who simply wires funds directly from the Canadian company's account to the U.S. enterprise, without this intermediate step properly documented, invites exactly the kind of ownership question that undermines an otherwise strong E-2 case.
What corporate investment structures require instead
Where it genuinely makes more sense for the Canadian company itself, rather than the individual, to be the treaty investor, E-2 status can be based on the company's investment instead, but that requires the company itself to be majority-owned by nationals of the treaty country and brings its own separate documentation requirements around the company's ownership structure and the individual's role as an employee coming to develop and direct the enterprise on the company's behalf. Deciding between an individual investment traced from the company and a corporate investment structured through the company itself should happen deliberately, based on which structure the actual facts support, rather than by default because that is where the funds happen to sit today.
What else is on your mind?
Is there one minimum investment that guarantees E-2 eligibility?Is holding money or owning an asset enough for E-2?Editorial source review: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.